"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
Edmund Burke. What happened on this Day in History?

Monday, July 1, 2013

This Day in History: Jul 1,1981: The Wonderland murders

The Wonderland murders, also known as the Four on the Floor Murders or the Laurel Canyon Murders,
are four unsolved killings that occurred in Los Angeles on July 1,
1981. Of the six targeted to be killed in the known drug house on
Wonderland Avenue, five were present; four of the five died from
extensive injuries: Joy Miller, Billy DeVerell, Ron Launius, and Barbara
Richardson. Launius' wife, Susan Launius, survived the attack. The
attack was allegedly masterminded by organized crime figure and nightclub owner Eddie Nash. Porn starJohn Holmes was arrested, tried, and acquitted for his involvement in the murders.

Robbery and murders

The Wonderland Gang was centered around the occupants of a rented townhouse at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in the Laurel Canyon section of Los Angeles: Joy Audrey Gold Miller (whose name was on the lease[citation needed]),
her live-in boyfriend William Raymond "Billy" DeVerell, David Lind, and
the gang's leader, Ronnie Lee "Ron" Launius. All four were involved in
drug use and drug dealing.

On June 28, 1981, the group met with friends Tracy McCourt and John Holmes, a porn star and known drug addict. They had decided to rob the home of Eddie Nash,
neé Adel Gharib Nasrallah, wealthy owner of several Los Angeles-area
night clubs and drug dealer. Holmes, whom Nash had befriended, visited
the house, ostensibly to buy drugs. While at Nash's home, Holmes
unlocked a back door for the gang to enter later. Holmes then went back
to Wonderland in order to report back to Launius and the others.

The next morning, June 29, DeVerell, Launius, Lind, and McCourt went
to Nash's house. While McCourt stayed with the car, a stolen Ford Granada, the other three entered through the unlocked door. Invading
the home, the trio handcuffed Nash and his live-in bodyguard, Gregory
Diles. During the course of the subsequent robbery, the group took
money, drugs, jewelry, threatened to kill Nash and Diles, and
accidentally grazed Diles with a bullet. They then went back to the
Wonderland Avenue townhouse to split up the money.

Nash suspected Holmes had been involved and ordered Diles to bring
Holmes to his house. Diles found Holmes on a street in Hollywood wearing
one of the rings that had been stolen from Nash and brought him back to
Nash. Nash directed Diles to beat Holmes and Nash threatened to kill
both Holmes and his family until Holmes identified the people behind the
robbery. The beating was witnessed by Scott Thorson, former boyfriend of Liberace, who was buying drugs at Nash's home.[1]

In the early morning of July 1, 1981, two days after the robbery, an
unknown number of assailants entered the Wonderland Avenue house.
DeVerell and Launius were present, along with Launius' wife Susan,
DeVerell's girlfriend Joy Miller, and Lind's girlfriend, Barbara
Richardson. Each occupant present was bludgeoned repeatedly with what
was later determined by the medical examiner and detectives to be a
striated steel pipe. Susan Launius was the only one in the home who
survived, albeit with serious injuries. A left palm print belonging to
John Holmes found on the bed railing above the head of Ron Launius gave
homicide detectives reason to believe John Holmes was present at the
site of the murder. Holmes denied participation in the killings or being
there when the murders happened. Later, however, he admitted to Sharon
Holmes and Dawn Schiller that he was forced to watch the killings, but
denied participating in them.[citation needed]

According to court testimony, David Lind survived because he was not
at the house at the time of the murders, having spent the night at a San
Fernando Valley motel with a prostitute and consuming drugs there.
Shortly after the news media reported the murders, Lind contacted the
police and informed on Nash and Holmes, thus giving them a start to
their investigation.[citation needed]

Police action and trials

Los Angeles Police Department detectives Tom Lange
and Robert Souza led the murder investigation and searched Nash's home a
few days after the crime. There they found more than $1 million worth
of cocaine,
as well as some items stolen from the Wonderland house. Following
arrest and conviction for the cocaine charges, Nash spent two years in
prison.[citation needed]

Because of the palm print found at the scene, Holmes was arrested and
charged with four counts of murder in March 1982. The prosecutor, Los
Angeles District Attorney Ron Coen, attempted to prove Holmes was a
willing participant who betrayed the Wonderland Gang after not getting a
full share of the loot from the robbery of Nash's house. Holmes'
court-appointed defense lawyers, Earl Hanson and Mitchell Egers,
successfully presented Holmes as one of the victims, having been forced
by the real killers to give them entry to the house where the murders
took place. Holmes was acquitted of all criminal charges on June 26,
1982.

For refusing to testify or cooperate with authorities, he spent
110 days in jail for contempt of court.[2]
Holmes died six years later on March 13, 1988, as a result of AIDS complications, at a VA Medical Center in Los Angeles.[citation needed]
Shortly after the murders, in her first newspaper interview in July
1981, Holmes' first wife, Sharon Gebenini-Holmes, stated that Holmes had
told her he'd known the people in the Wonderland house and that he had
been there shortly before the murders occurred. She did not divulge any
additional information to police. During an interview several years
following his death, Sharon stated that Holmes had come to her house the
morning after the killings, with blood splattered all over his clothes.
Holmes was personally uninjured, and he did not give her any details to
explain the condition of his clothing.

One month before Holmes died,
two police detectives visited him at the VA hospital to question him
about what he knew about the murders. Nothing came out of the visit
because Holmes was barely awake and his responses to their questions
were incoherent. Yet on his deathbed, Holmes refused to answer the
detectives's inquiries about whether he took part in the murders or
divulge anything else about his involvement.[citation needed]

In 1990, Nash was charged in California state court with having
planned the murders, and Diles was charged with participating in the
murders. Thorson testified against them, but the trial ended with a hung
jury vote of 11–1 for conviction.[citation needed] The second trial in 1991 ended in acquittal.[citation needed] Diles died in 1995.[citation needed]

In 2000, after a four-year joint investigation involving local and
federal authorities, Nash was arrested and indicted on federal charges
under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
(RICO) for running a drug trafficking and money laundering operation,
conspiring to carry out the Wonderland Murders, and bribing the sole
holdout juror of his first trial. Nash, already in his seventies and
suffering from emphysema and several other ailments, agreed to a plea bargain
agreement in September 2001. He admitted to having bribed the lone
holdout in his first trial, a young woman, with $50,000, and pled guilty
to the RICO charges and to money laundering. He admitted to having
ordered his associates to retrieve stolen property from the Wonderland
house, which might have resulted in violence including murder, yet he
denied having planned the Wonderland murders. In the end, Nash received a
four-and-a-half-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.[3][4][5]

Where are they now?

As of January 2007, the sole survivor of the robbery at Eddie Nash's mansion is Nash himself. Susan Launius is the only remaining survivor of the infamous Wonderland Gang.

Ron Launius, Billy DeVerell, Joy Miller, and Barbara Richardson all died in the 1981 massacre.[30]